This is a book that has really good in-depth explanations of Japanese grammar. I found it very useful and easy to read. It is called JAPANESE GRAMMAR: A GUIDE FOR STUDENTS

The first section clearly discusses nouns, Pronouns, verbs (with the different tenses, positave and negative, plain and formal etc etc), adjectives, particles, location words, word order and basic sentance structure, compound sentances and many other things including basic counters and how to use them, and transitive and intransitive verbs. The 'particles' section looks at each main one in turn.

The second section has some more complex structures. Each structure has a good explanation and known exceptions regarding the structures are shown. There are numerous examples for each structure. Similar structures are compared to each other and it is disscussed sublte differences between each.

There is also a good explanation of keigo (formal language). Again, exceptions in this area are covered.

This book has helped me progress immensely. It is all in Hiragana and katakana (explanations in english of course). However as this book addresses 'grammar', it is not intended for teaching vocab or kanji, and there are no graded lessons, although one should study the first section first.

Another problem is that it is a New Zealand book so I'm not sure if it is easy to purchase in some other countries. I know it is being sold in Australia. Here are some websites:

なめらか日本語会話 Successful Communication in Japanese by Yoko Yomisaka (富坂容子), ISBN 4-87234-635-1
- This book teaches casual, everyday Japanese. If you go to Japan & make friends, you'll hear this stuff all the time.

Understanding Basic Japanese Grammar by Nishiguchi Koichi (西口光一), ISBN 4-7574-0168-X
- It says basic, but I think it's better for someone who's already studied a bit of Japanese already. It has a lot of grammar & examples with English translations. It doesn't really explain the grammar though, so that's why I think it's not really for people just starting out.

１日１５分の漢字練習, ISBN 4-7574-0125-6
- This book has 555 kanji & you're supposed to learn them all in 3 months if you study 6 per day (like I'm gonna do that). Anyway, it gives the onyomi & kunyomi, stroke order & a few examples of how to use it. All the explanations arre in English, Chinese & Korean, so it's good for people that don't speak English (as a first language or at all).

All these books have short excercises in them too. They're not too expensive.. about ２０００円 each. B):)

The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.☆-D.Adams

Anything by a woman named Jordan or published by Yale. I can go into great detail how this woman is the devil, but thepeople@Amazon.com reviews do it so much better than I ever could. Quite few have come close to failing their Japanese college courses because the courses assigned one of her books -- forcing them to buy additional textbooks to supplement absolutely everything that should've been taught by her.

I went to Amazon.com to look for the reviews of her book (because I like obloquy and disparagment - particularly of sh****, mincing books written by people of a similar classification.); I found but one of her books, whose sales rank was 3,000,000 (laugh), but was not able to find any reviews of it.

I was really in the mood for a laugh. Could you please post a link to those reviews? That woouuld be siiimply deliiiiiicious...... ::evil laugh::

P.S. Conversational approaches to learning a language SUCK, if not complemented by some effort to delve into the grammatical principles behind those formulaic and insipid phrases characteristic of the conversational approach to Japanese.

::begin parody of conversational books::

If ever a person should say:あなたは何をしているんですか？ (Note: Kanji would not actually be present.)

I just recieved JFBP books and I have to say, they are great! It starts with conversation and vocabulary that you understand. Even for very beginners like me, it is a great book and it is perfect if you wanna master hiragana and katakana. In the introduction, it says it introduces 20 Kanji... I haven't gotten that far yet. But I recommend this book with the workbook, but you may want to experiment and find out what fits your learning style. Hope I helped! Good Luck!

Last edited by kydancer0123 on Thu 08.04.2005 12:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

I noticed no one has mentioned the Nakama series (Japanese Communication, Culture, Context). This is the text assigned to the two Beginning Japanese courses at my university. Reviews are scarce, but the few I read have both good and bad things to say. Although I have no choice but to use it, I am curious if anyone here is familiar with Nakama, and what their opinions of it are (esp. in relation to other texts). If it is as inadequate as the Jordan books mentioned above, I might have to purchase some supplementary material.

Horrid, July 21, 2005
Reviewer: liam2 (Ft. Campbell, KY United States) - See all my reviews
I have to agree with a few of the previous reviewers. This is possibly the worst textbook you could use for learning Japanese. When I began studying, I was full of enthusiasm, and this book did a good job of killing it off. The book is, as several reviewers have said, BORING. No pictures (not a necessity, but nothing - not even the standard Hokusai Fuji pic), no cultural information, long winded explanations where a simple one would do. The romanization system is terrible, as one reviewer said "Fuji" becomes "huzi," "nichi" becomes "niti," etc. The vocabulary is woefully inadequate, as I found out after I arrived in Japan, and so is the grammar. I discovered that, after a year and a half of college Japanese using this book, I still did not know how to say in Japanese "If I ..." Basic grammar constructions are neglected, and too much time is wasted on trying to get the different levels of honorifics implanted in your brain. To which I say, who cares? If you come to Japan, people will know you are a foreigner and cut you some slack if you say "arimasu" instead of "gozaimasu." I could go on and on, but suffice to say don't buy this book. If you are a student of Japanese at Ohio State, though, I feel for you - the author is a professor there; it's the book they use.

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Sadly, the attempt to update Jorden to a more "modern" format has not been a success, and I urge students who want to teach themselves proper grammar (and therefore correct Japanese) to search out the old, out-of-print edition of Prof. Jorden's pioneering Japanese textbook.
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A lot of the Japanese in this book is very "safe" and standard, and is becoming a bit outdated. Some might say there's no "real world" language in here.
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This text book alone forced me to drop my college class. To say this book is confusing is an understatement. All other books I've read teach romanji, and then go onto hiragana, katakana, then eventually kanji. This book, however... was not what I expected or had braced myself for. Even my instructor told me it wasn't the best book! (He was a native Japanese speaker!) This was all the college bookstore had which is a shame. This is Japanese written with poor phonetics and a bad attempt at that. "zya" instead of "ja?" This is not the correct way to learn Japanese, I'm sorry. It only complicates the easiest of exercises to learn the language.

I dropped the class after a few weeks of confusion and picked up "Japanese for Everyone" which I've had better luck with so far, learning with my friends or on my own.

In closing I have to say, please do not use this outdated, inaccurate book. It makes learning Japanese a confusing, tedious chore. No fun at all.
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It is a little dated in parts- mainly in some of the vocabulary items, but by far the biggest problem is the poor quality of the cassettes. The versions put out by Kodansha seem to be better, but the ones from Cheng and Tsui are very very poor. The physical quality of the tapes is bad (they seem to have used the cheapest they could get)@and the recording quality ranges from poor to almost unusable at times. There is also a section of drills which has been edited out presumably because there was not enough room on the tape! These points could be addressed in an up-dated edition. The option od a version incorporating kana (with appropriate indications of accent) would also be a welcome addition.
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CAVEAT EMPTOR!!!!!!, August 15, 2003
Reviewer: Polyglot (cambridge, ma) - See all my reviews
Having just survived the intensive elementary Japanese course at Harvard, which covers an entire year in seven weeks, I feel well-qualified to offer the following advice: CAVEAT EMPTOR. The Jorden system can be summed up in one simple English word, but instead why don't I write it for you in Jordenese: âbusúrudo.
I have read the other reviewers' remarks, and it is clear to me that the Jorden polarizing effect reflects a distinction between those who already knew Japanese before opening Jorden's books, and those who did not. Anyone who wants to learn how to speak, read and write Japanese would do well to avoid these texts at all costs. I am thrilled to report that Harvard has finally seen the light, and has now adopted NAKAMA (to begin in the fall of 2003), a text with examples written in Japanese and English explanations. At last, after decades of inertia, the experts have finally recognized that the worst way to learn a new language is to do it via another new language, in this case, "Jordenese". It does not take a pedagogical genius to recognize that the best way to learn a new language is through the use of examples written in the language itself. How many people learn German via Esperanto? Answer: none. How many people learn Japanese via Jordenese? I ask you sincerely. The last thing that Japanese needs is gratuitous obfuscation and that, in my view, is Eleanor Jorden's sole contribution to language pedagogy. Leave the accents circonflexes where they belong, namely, in the French language, s'il vous plaît.

Japanese is a phonetic language: what you see is what you say. All you have to do is learn the basic phonemes (syllables) as represented by hiragana and katakana, and you are on your way to reading and speaking Japanese. The real challenge of Japanese is not how to pronounce syllables, which is in no way clarified through romanization (and even less through jordenization), but how to learn the kanji and their multiple interpretations. This task takes time, and the sooner you begin the better. Spending a year or more learning "spoken Japanese" via the Jorden method will make it MORE not LESS difficult to advance to the written language, which is undoubtedly the primary attraction for most people who decide to learn Japanese. I will, however, concede that if you buy only the drill tapes (not the textbooks) and the "instructor's supplement" typescripts (which are written entirely in hiragana, katakana, and kanji), then you will not sabotage your acquisition of fluency in Japanese. But what beginners really need is a well-organized text with clear explanations written in good English (which, by the way, Jorden's is not), accompanied by examples written in Japanese. Far from being user-friendly, Jorden's texts are user-hostile. It is virtually impossible to look even the simplest grammar point up, so in order to review, one is forced to completely re-read entire chapters. This is a complete waste of time (not to mention painful, given Jorden's horrid English).

Aside from the ridiculousness of forcing students to learn Jordenese when they really signed up for a course on Japanese, I would like to explain why reading Jorden's texts is a complete nightmare for anyone with a strongly visual memory. The grammar explanations in Jorden's text are of course written in English. But the examples of "Japanese usage" are written in Jordenese, which is NOT phonetic English. This means that after having suffered through thick passages of Jorden's ugly prose, one must first translate her Jordenese examples into phonetic English BEFORE translating them into Japanese. This is likely to induce severe cognitive dissonance in anyone whose memory is primarily visual (as is my own). Ironically, the people best-suited to learn Japanese are least likely to be able to read Jorden's text and, sadly, many of them have probably dropped their classes in despair.

In addition to impeding students' acquisition of reading fluency in Japanese, the Jorden method is a complete waste of time. There are many languages out there worth learning-finitude dictates that we choose some small number of those to make our own. Jorden's Solipsistic Language (JSL) is not worth learning because it is used by no people anywhere. Nor does it have any linguistic or historical interest, as do languages such as Sanskrit and ancient Greek.

For all of these reasons (and more...) I implore all language lovers to band together to stop the Jorden madness today. Do not buy this book or use this book in your courses. Do not talk to people who do. Only we can stop the megalomaniacal Jorden from further diminishing the already tiny percentage of foreigners willing to invest the time needed to learn Japanese. When I think of the gifted students who signed up for Japanese intrigued by the kanji-hiragana-katakana system and dropped out because of their unwillingness (or inability) to learn Jordenese, I just want to cry.

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I have never hated anything more than I hate this book, May 21, 2003
Reviewer: A reader
I'm in the third year of this program and I watch my class continue to struggle everyday with even the simplest grammar. The emphasis is on memorizing conversations, which is completely worthless unless everyone in Japan asks you the same questions regarding the convience of your subway stop and the availablity of certain types of pens. One may also find it rather absurd that they will learn the kanji for hospital director and economics before dog or window. Note also that the word "table" is not introduced until the middle of the second volume. The material is poorly organized, hard to find, and absolutely chart-less. Worst of all, our the Japanese teaching assistants (native speakers mind you) chuckle at how out of date the material is and tell us that the only people who talk like this are old rich women and elevator operators. Run away from this teaching method while you still can.

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Don't buy this book or use it in your classroom!!!, February 4, 2002
Reviewer: Mark Constantine "smackfeind69" (Ellensburg, WA USA) - See all my reviews
I have studied Japanese in one form or another at three different schools over the past three years with several different textbooks and I can honestly say that this is the worst textbook I have ever seen. Not only does it leave out the Japanese writing system, which is neccesary for learning how to read but the contents of the book are not useful in real world situations that would require one to interact with others. I would not wish this book upon my worst enemy and I beg any teacher that is thinking about using it to reconsider.
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Welcome to Jordan-Go! The worst Japanese book ever!, September 29, 2001
Reviewer: A reader
Everyone do yourself a favor; do not buy this book! I repeat do not buy this book! In fact if you are studying at a University that uses this book, don't walk RUN as fast as you can away from it! Band together, and tell the faculty to get their act together. Yeah I`m talking to you Ohio State, Portland State and all of the other schools that use this lame text! Jordan, the author of this book has only accomplished the astonishing feat of producing her own language, Jordan-go. This book is certainly not Japanese. First it is not written in Japanese. It is written in Romanji, a useless method of learning Japanese that does not lead to fluency. What does Jordan think? Kanji or least Hiragana is impossible? You have got to be kidding me. Even in the high levels of this book you find more Romanji. You also find a bunch of linguistic mumbo jumbo that overcomplicates the book. The vocabulary is too simple for many of the advanced chapters and for many graduates of this method find that their writing and reading skills are undeveloped. If they took the national Japanese examination they would probably not be able to pass level 2. (level 1 and 2 are the hardest by the way) Why should this be? 4 years in Japanese should be plenty to learn almost all aspects of the Japanese language. I have lived in Japan for a few years now and let me tell you, the language that is used in this book is far from what you will find in natural conversations. I suggest using Minna no Nihongo. (If you find Minna no Nihongo too easy then try some of the more advanced books published by The Japan Times.) Minna No Nihongo is straightforward in it`s grammar explanations and has plenty of useful vocabulary that will help you become more fluent at a pace that far exceeds Jordan`s miserable attempt. As for this waste of paper you are now thinking about purchasing, the only highlight of this book is that it will get you speaking somewhat. Actors have to remember scripts, and this is also the method using this book. You remember a set Japanese script. If the situation deviates from the script then guess what? You will have no idea what is going on cause buddy you don't know real Japanese...
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Curriculum and Methodology VERY outdated, January 25, 2001
Reviewer: Nancy (FL) - See all my reviews
I was forced to teach high school Japanese using this textbook for seven years. Both I and my students were unimpressed with the heavy emphasis on its audiolingual methodology. I had to supplement with my own materials for culture and kana/kanji writing. The entire book centers around grammar, not useful Japanese. The current ACTFL proficiency guidelines and National Foreign Language standards now stress task-based curricula used with a more modern teaching methodology that incorporates real-life situations and materials. The book does contain some weird Japanese that is only there to fit the grammar point. The videos are old and the sound quality is bad. If you want good, current Japanese that also includes culture (NONE in the Jorden method!) notes, go with anything put out by the publishers of the Nihongo Journal (ALC Press). No textbook these days is entirely in roomaji either. I gave this book one star for its usefulness as a grammar guide.

Nakama has a very respectable reputation, although even that will need some supplements. I haven't bought this one yet, but I probably will soon {I collect Japanese textbooks and have close to 50 at this point}

Anyway, there is a huge Web site the goes along with these textbooks that was developed by teacher to supplement the book for students that's excellent. I have it on my other computer and I'll post it here later on when I get the chance.

i've used nakama volumes one and two in college japanese classes. i'm not terribly fond of them, but it seems to be par for the course when it comes to american japanese college textbooks. college textbooks are must for guiding your studies, but you'll always have to supplement them.

At last, after decades of inertia, the experts have finally recognized that the worst way to learn a new language is to do it via another new language, in this case, "Jordenese". It does not take a pedagogical genius to recognize that the best way to learn a new language is through the use of examples written in the language itself. How many people learn German via Esperanto? Answer: none. How many people learn Japanese via Jordenese?

Actually...my first language is Finnish and I learn Japanese via English and I've had no problems with it!

What are the odds for finding the book "Japanese for Busy People" in our local bookshop? Well, I found it but didn't buy it because we have to buy a c***load of books anyway because school started today. Nevertheless I'm still amazed how that book found its way there. A sign?

Thanks Menoma Minx. Those were pretty funny. I love a good bad-review. (That's quite the oxymoron.)

Toni-

Those 'Japanese for Busy People' books are at my local bookstore as well. It's 'cause they suck. If a grammar for any language can be found at a local bookstore, that usually means that it blows. Here's why: People are generally stupid and, thus, like things that are easy because no one likes come to a realization of his limitations. Since stupid people constitute the majority, the most popluar things are the things which do not challenge the intellect. Since bookstores are here to make money, they sell what is most popular - the easy books of which the soporific and mindless majority is fond. Japanese is a challenging language; and any book which teaches Japanese which does not also challenge one's mind to a reasonable extent, is an inept book, not amenable to truly teaching one Japanese, and, therefore, blows.

I am not necessarily calling you stupid. I do not know much about that book, but, from what I've seen, it sucks pretty hard. You ought to buy 'A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar' and 'A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar', if you want something more than a tenuous and less-than-impressive command of the language.

Last edited by CviCvraeVtMoriar on Wed 08.17.2005 7:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

the japanese for busy people series is a staple in the japanese language section of bookstores in america, so it's no miraculous event that you found it. but having flipped through it again at a bookstore the other day, i cannot bring myself to recommend it to anyone.

Those 'Japanese for Busy People' books are at my local bookstore as well. It's 'cause they suck. If a grammar for any language can be found at a local bookstore, that usually means that it blows. Here's why: People are generally stupid and, thus, like things that are easy because no one likes come to a realization of his limitations. Since stupid people constitute the majority, the most popluar things are the things which do not challenge the intellect. Since bookstores are here to make money, they sell what is most popular - the easy books of which the soporific and mindless majority is fond. Japanese is a challenging language; and any book which teaches Japanese which does not also challenge one's mind to a reasonable extent, is an inept book, not amenable to truly teaching one Japanese, and, therefore, blows.

I am not necessarily calling you stupid. I do not know much about that book, but, from what I've seen, it sucks pretty hard. You ought to buy 'A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar' and 'A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar', if you want something more than a tenuous and less-than-impressive command of the language.

Lol, don't worry, I didn't get the picture that you were calling me stupid. But thanks for the warning, I'll flip it through the next time I'm in that book shop. The book store here is very versatile and I haven't got the picture that the books would be for mindless people (though you know better what the situation is there in America) but I agree that they usually have all the books that contain more or less "basic knowledge", i.e. stuff that people want to hear and buy and that will sell. I know that if I want to have a good book then I'll have to go to Helsinki (which I'm gonna do because I want to check what books they have there, other than that book for busy people). Maybe I'll find that Genki book which hopefully costs less than a 100 bucks... Those people there in Amazon.com sell the book with ridiculously high prices!

skrhgh3b wrote:the japanese for busy people series is a staple in the japanese language section of bookstores in america, so it's no miraculous event that you found it.